Psychologist Says 'Kleptomania' Is A Bogus Diagnosis

A man – a retired emeritus professor in his late 70s – strolls
into a local supermarket. When a clerk tells him they don't carry
the particular brand of salad dressing he's looking for, he walks
over to investigate for himself.

Lo' and behold, he finds it in stock.

After a pause, he picks it up, puts it in his coat pocket and
leaves the store without so much as a second glance.

Before you call him a petty thief, think about it for a second:
This guy can certainly afford a couple bucks' worth of
dressing.

Per the APA, there are five characteristics an individual must
meet in order to fit the bill: They impulsively steal stuff they
can afford/don't need; they get a thrill doing it; they feel
badly afterward; there are no other mental issues to blame; and,
lastly, they don't steal out of anger or vengeance.

"The definition, as far as I'm concerned, basically eliminates
virtually all cases of what I call 'atypical theft behavior,'" he
said in a recent telephone
interview. "Kleptomania virtually doesn't
exist."

In the three decades he's spent studying and writing on the
subject, he claims he can barely come up with a handful of his
700+ patients who have qualified as true kleptomaniacs. Nearly
all of them were acting, in part, based on some type of anger or
need for vengeance.

Let's revisit Prof. Salad Dressing's case:

If you asked him how he felt during the theft, as Dr. Cupchik
did, he'd tell you he wasn't upset or angry at all. He stole the
dressing on impulse and felt horribly guilty afterward.

But dig a bit deeper and you'd find out the last time he was at
that store, he'd been called by a neighbor to pick up his ailing
wife the week before. She'd been wandering around, dazed and
sobbing, after undergoing a rather intense chemotherapy treatment
at a hospital. At the time, he was furious that no one who worked
in the store had offered to help her.

"I'd like to suggest that that this professor stole this jar of
dressing not by chance, but because he was so angry," Dr. Cupchik
said. "And because he was angry, you cannot call him a
kleptomaniac."

So, what do you call the millions of Americans who can't shake
the urge to steal for no good reason?

For now, Atypical Theft Offenders will have to do, at least until
the APA can figure out whether it's going to change its
definition or not. Dr. Cupchik said that those wheels are already
turning and the change could come as soon as 2013.

But that's not the complete answer. The worry now is that once
psychologists stop having to ask whether ATOs were acting out of
anger before they stole, it's possible that what's actually
triggering the theft won't ever be found.

"What's going on in their mind is (a cognitive distortion) and
the next question is, 'What was going on in your life just prior
to your act of stealing'?" he said.

"For a lot of these people, there's been early abuse, early
sexual abuse, physical abuse. It's really important to find the
source, and until you do, they'll be at risk for doing it
again."